


Creation Stories of the Four Nations

by crushinator



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Creation Myth, Gen, Original Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 07:02:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3886774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crushinator/pseuds/crushinator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Each nation of the world has many creation stories. These versions, compiled by renowned scholar and historian Jungney of the Northern Air Temple, were rediscovered by Avatar Aang in ASC 105.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arviq Dreams the World

_Origin: Southern Water Tribe._

All life is thread within the loom of dreams. There are three colors on the loom; the grey underworld, the white overworld, and the indigo world, where people and animals dwell.

At the beginning of the thread, there was only the sea. No ice. No tiger-seals or elk or fox-hares to hunt. No kelp, no sea-prunes, no shells. No thaw, no freeze. No day, no night. No mother, no father. No children. Only the sea, and Arviq, the great whale, who was the dream of the sea. 

In the moment between moments Arviq became aware that he was the only creature. Though nameless currents pushed and pulled at his flanks and fins, there was no one to sing with him as he traversed the endless sea. So he, too, dreamed. 

He dreamed his mother and father, and the sea became La, the ocean spirit, and with him Tui, his wife the moon. Enraputred with one another, Tui and La forgot their duties, and begat the plants and the fish and all the bounty of the sea. Then Arviq dreamed of a house for his mother apart from his own, and the sky, Bi, was born, and with him came his children the stars. This was the overworld, the white world, and Tui and the spirits live there to this day. La still reaches for Tui as she dances across her house the sky.

Arviq dreamed of warmth, and the sun, Su, was born, and with him came the first day, and the first thaw. For a time Su's face was always turned to Arviq, until the sea became hot like stew and Arviq became so fatigued he could no longer dream. Then Tui called to him, and Su turned his face away, and this was the first freeze, and the first night. When it grew so cold that Arviq and the world became encased in endless ice, La called Su to him, and Su turned back, and this was the second thaw, and the second day. Tui still must call Su to her every night, lest the world become hot again, and La must call Su to him every day, lest the world freeze forever. Just as Su brings life, so too do Tui and La keep the balance, so that we may all dream.

Arviq dreamed the colors in the sky, the wind that stirs the ocean, the snow that falls into water like feathers. He dreamt his brothers, the orca and nar-dolphins that swim swiftly through La and hunt but do not sing. Then Arviq's dreams turned to nightmares, and he dreamt the Fang Woman and Skull Raven and the Winter Shades that appear when Su has turned his face away during the long night.

Arviq's parents saw their son and took pity on him. Together, Tui and La pulled and pushed at the endless sea until they caused a new thing to rise from the warm grey underworld, and they called it land. Where La's hands shaped the land he left ice and vegetation and the slow rivers. Where Tui pulled she created the mountains and valleys and the swift rivers. Then they slept together, exhausted from their creation, and as they slept they dreamdc the animals. The wolf, who cries out to the beautiful moon because he cannot reach her. The penguin, who lives in joy on both sea and land. The polar-tiger, who hunts the fox-hare and the tern and the elk. The raven, who tricks the albatross-gull into giving up its nest.

But still they did not dream of one who could sing. And so Arviq, in despair, flung himself onto the land and died.

From his jaw bones came the first woman, and from his tail bones came the first man. They beheld the land that they had been born into and saw that it was beautiful, and settled there. The woman fashioned a spear from Arviq's rib and used it to hunt, and the man used Arviq's fat to preserve the meat the woman brought home and to light their igloo and cook their food. They used Arviq's teeth to cure leather, and they used Arviq's fine fin bones to weave cloth from the pelts of their kills and the flax plants that grew in the valleys. And, late at night, long after Su and Tui had gone to sleep, the man and the woman would sing to one another. For this, Tui and La blessed them with a child, and the child dreamed of Arviq. And Arviq came into the indigo world once again.

In gratitude, Tui and La blessed the child with the ability to weave water, from which everything began. She was the first waterbender, and the mother of our tribes. When she came of age, she married Arviq, and their children became the Water Tribe, and they went on to dream of children of their own, some of whom could bend water, some who sang, some who hunted, some who wove, and all who dreamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story [references Inuit and Kwakiutl mythology](http://seserakh.tumblr.com/citations).


	2. Balance in All Things

_Origin: Eastern Earth Kingdom_

First there was a void. There is no name for this; its shape was non-existence. It was limpid and quiescent, formless and unfixed, and existed outside the boundaries of time and space. The great dualities, yin and yang, dark and light, had not yet diverged. All was One; at rest and eternal; unsettled, autonomous, and without cause.

From this void, vapor rose, and from this vapor grew existence. Existence split to create duality. All creative energy was derived from this duality. Motion and action gave birth to conjunction and transformation and produced light and dark. All that was light and weightless rose to create heaven, and all that was dark and heavy fell to produce earth. Yin and Yang rose from the union of heaven and earth, and from their harmonious energy the sun and moon formed, and the four elements, and the four directions, and the eight pillars of earth, and the sixteen great rivers that flow to the edges of the world. All the while, the void expanded to cradle existence in its center, simultaneously subsuming and overflowing its boundaries to create the realm of spirits, from which the four gods emerged.

The four gods nourished the fledgling greenery and creatures and the spirits that flowed across existence. The greatest of the four gods, the lion-turtle, struck a spring of water while digging in the desert. This meeting of water and sand engendered a fertile duality, and mud was created. Humans rose from this mud; from the furrows dug by the lion-turtle's divine claws. The lion-turtle, noticing the beings in the sand beside him, breathed upon them, infusing them with vapor. Those whose energies aligned with Yin took on female forms, and those whose energies aligned with Yang took on male forms. Those who took on both aspects took on both forms, or neither. Balance and creative duality were thus embodied in all, and the People of Earth came into existence.

The People of Earth, together with the great lion-turtle, developed all the arts and sciences, the spheres of domesticity and exploration, the rules of civilization and duty, and all the tenets of a balanced and dignified existence. The first city was raised with the aid of the badgermoles, and the first temples were raised with the aid of the winged boars. Spirits and dragons and phoenixes and people lived alongside one another. Serenity was maintained for ten thousand years.

One day, a man named Pangu, who was a giant and beloved by his people, encountered a stranger. This stranger professed to have never encountered the People of Earth, and claimed his allegiance to another element. Astonished by this, Pangu brought this man back with him to his city. Upon beholding the wonders of civilization, the man thanked Pangu ten times. Pangu invited him to return ten more.

The man did return, and brought with him an army.

For a thousand years, the People of Earth knew nothing but war. The four gods, each in support of their own people, fought amongst themselves, forgetting that the world could not exist without balance in all things. In their fighting, they created the vast oceans, and the Great Divide, and the Kolau Mountains, and the Five Great Valleys, and the Serpent's Pass, and the Huangguoshu Waterfalls, and innumerable other gashes and peaks across the surface of the receptive earth. The people and the spirits perished, and rallied, and battled, and perished again, and rallied again, and battled again, on and on and on, all assured of the rightness of their actions, all under the protection of the four gods. It was an age of blood and wonder.

At the end of the thousandth year, the gods convened in the center of the world, where the eight pillars of earth separate the world from the heavens. They came together in a great conjunction of Air and Fire, of Water and Earth. In their fighting, they broke the pillars, and the sky and ground crashed into one another. Lava erupted from the broken valleys, fires raged uncontrolled, and holes were ripped in the fallen sky. Wild beasts preyed on the blameless. Water emerged from the gaps in the earth and flooded the plains until only the mountain peaks remained dry. It was thought to be the end of all things.

The energy of this conjunction quickened the vapor that both inhabits and forms the universe. From this quickening, Nuwa coalesced. She was the fifth god, who embodied within herself the essence of balance. At the second of her birth, Nuwa opened her five eyes, and raised her four hands. All battling ceased.

Nuwa drove the wild beasts back to the forests. She enlisted the four gods to provide succor to their people. She patched the holes in the skies and plugged the holes in the earth. She repaired the eight great pillars and raised the heavens to their proper place. She dug basins to encourage the floods to recede to the rivers and the seas. She extinguished the raging fires and calmed the surging lava. She drew borders to provide all people with proper places, to promote social stability, and to discourage conflict, which arises from avarice and jealousy, and disrupts the positive energy of serene duality to create negative opposition. With her actions, she restored balance, and healed the wounds torn in the universe from a millennium of war.

The four gods saw the wisdom in her actions. When she lay down, exhausted from her work, they pledged themselves to her, and carried her into the realm of heaven, where she still reigns. The spirits followed them.

The People of Earth lived on without the protection of the lion-turtle, always mindful that in order to maintain harmony, balance must be maintained. So it was then, and so it continues to this day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story [references various Chinese creation stories](http://seserakh.tumblr.com/citations).


	3. The Fifth Sun

_Origin: Bhanti Island._

We praise Shen, source of light and life,  
whose body fell to fang,  
Who is the foundation of the cosmic sea,  
The whole and half the whole,  
and more than the whole combined,  
Whose coils encircled all that is now,  
and all that ever will be.  
We strive to be worthy. We turn our hearts towards the sky.  
We hold fire in our hearts.  


It is said that once all existence was contained within a great egg, whose shell was gold and black, and whose weight was that of the universe. All was still and silent. Time did not exist. Every moment was folded in on itself, leaf upon leaf upon leaf. Only the egg existed, and the being within it, who had named itself Shen.

Within the egg, Shen moved. It was then that every moment that ever was and ever will be bloomed in a radial cascade, spinning outwards, unfolding in a spiral without end. This was the manifestation of time; the hatching of Shen.

Shen pushed its hands through the shell and warm, salty water spilled from all sides. The shells of Shen’s egg followed the flow of the water to become the borders of the universe, with Shen in the center. For an aeon, Shen slept, and all that was existed in dreams.

In the course of time, Shen opened its eyes. The shell _was_ , the sea _was_ , the universe _was_ , and Shen perceived them. This was the manifestation of materiality. Shen raised its hands and saw them against the gold and black sky. This was manifestation of self-awareness. 

As Shen’s hatching gave way to time, so too did Shen’s awareness give rise to the senses and elements. The first and most important of these is the element of sound. Sound rises from the breath and joins the sky; the etheric matter that makes up the body of the universe. It penetrates and catalyzes everything. The sky surrounded Shen. When Shen felt the touch of ether on its body, it made the first sound, a long, low hum that can still be heard by those who are quiet enough to listen. This sound reacted with the ether to produce air, which took shape as fire rising from Shen’s mouth. Where the fire touched water pieces of earth formed, and from the earth rose odor. Shen tasted the earth, and drank the water, and coiled around the new land and the water to rest.

Shen slept. Its body, quiescent and fertile, surrounding the elements it engendered, quickened. From its heart came Kai, the mother of nats, which inhabit and form all things. From its mouth came Manu, the ancestor of dragons. And from its hands came many-faced Agni, acceptor of sacrifice.

Time passed. Shen’s children, imbibed with the drive to create, worked together to light the fire of the first sun. Animals and plants, enticed by the light, emerged from Shen’s pores. But the first sun’s flame was unstable. Shen’s breath put it out as often as it could be lit. After a time, it could not be relit. And so it was turned into the moon.

The second sun was created by Kai. The sun was weak and cold, but it persisted. The world that bloomed under this sun was covered in frost and gave only little to the creatures that lived in it. In time, they began to starve. Hungry nats emerged from the bodies of the wretched and devoured what little delight was left in the world. Wind swept through empty peaks. The sound that permeates the universe became muffled under countless layers of snow. The sun, in despair, drowned itself in the sea.

The third sun was created by Agni. This sun was powerful and hot. The world that struggled under the second sun flourished under the third. Snow melted to give rise to rivers and lakes. Flowers the size of trees and trees the size of mountains sprouted upon the earth, and nats such as Maya and Chiton joined Shen’s children in the ether. But only for a time. Soon, fires raged uncontrolled, water turned into air, and creatures died of thirst. Manu and Kai, with earth as their ally, destroyed this sun, thus preventing Shen from burning in his sleep.

The fourth sun was created by Manu. This sun provided a perfect balance of heat and cold to produce warmth and light and all that is necessary for life. Dragons sprang from the ashes of the old world and spiraled through the sky of the new. Manu and Maya embraced, and people came forth. They sought to know and work and create as their progenitors, and established homes upon the warm earth. But the fourth sun could not stay fixed in the sky. The fire that enabled it to give life also propelled it outward, outward, and still outward into the ether, where it will travel until the day it meets the shell of the universe.

The fifth sun was created by Shen. Its rest complete, Shen stood on its four legs, stretched its shining coils, and began devouring its own tail. With each bite, it breathed fire, searing its scales to a bright burnished yellow. Eventually, it swallowed itself. Agni accepted the sacrifice, and the fifth sun was born, yellow as the scales of the one that birthed it. So it burns in the sky today.

At the center of this sun, an egg incubates. When the first sound fades, and the sun’s flames subside, and the elements return to ether, and the gods and the nats and the creatures and the people that live and die upon the earth fade into the sea, time will fold back in on itself, and Shen will float at the center of it all, and from this egg, it will be born again.

It was thus that the universe was created. It is thus that the universe will be created. It is thus that at the end of all, a beginning will appear once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story references [Vedic, Burmese, and Aztec creation stories](http://seserakh.tumblr.com/citations).


	4. A Circle Has No Beginning

_Origin: Northern Air Temple_

Infinite is the sky. Infinite is time.  
Infinite are the cycles of death and rebirth.  
What has no beginning has no end;  
The circle, in time, always turns again.

Origin: singular. A fixed measurable point. The seed from which everything is germinated. Creation: an act. To make, to bring something from nonexistence to existence. To take a tree and fashion it into a table.

But when was the origin created? Who planted the tree?

Some say that once, all was still. Some say that the stars slept, and the moon slept, and the sun slept, and the wind slept. Some say that eventually, they woke, and began to turn. Some say that the world was once full of flat water, and the water slowly evaporated away, leaving mountains that gave way to trees that gave way to grasslands that gave way to rivers and the sea below. Some say that a flying lemur came to these mountains, seeking a place to forage for nuts. Some say that this lemur married a phoenix, and they loved each other well, and their union brought four hundred children into the world who laughed and played and wandered and lost their hair and feathers and tails and became people, the same people who live today and glide on the wind like their parents before them. Some say that we are these people, and that is why the sky bison are drawn to us, and the ring-lemurs, and the great red phoenixes that own nothing and are from themselves reborn.

But where did the lemur come from? The phoenix? The grasslands? The trees? The mountains? The water? The wind? The world? The sun? The moon? The sky? The stars? The universe beyond? Why did they wake? Why did they sleep? When did they first sleep? Were they created? Was their creator created? Was their creator's creator created? Who was there? Who can say?

Consider the lotus. The lotus flower sprouts from last season’s seed. It rises from a long stalk to bloom through deep water. It raises its leaves and petals to the sky. It shines through a short season and gives its life to create seeds. Its vibrant petals wither. Its leaves lose their sheen. The winds that knock the seeds into the water once crowded with life flow over blank waves, just as they flow through the four great temples. And the seeds sink. Time continues. Life continues. Death continues. Birth continues. The sky continues. The wind spins and spins. And from the lotus that died another seed sprouts anew. 

What is your answer? Did the flower beget the seed or the seed the flower? Where does a circle begin?

To speculate the origin of all things is fruitless. Creation is not an act, committed at a fixed point by a singular being. Creation makes itself. The world is created thousands of times every second. It is a process, set in unceasing motion, without a measurable start.

Our existence is therefore both inevitable and absurd. The moment we are born, we begin to die. If we spend all our time alive speculating on the origin of it, we die without discovering the possibilities of our lives now. So do not ask about the source of the wood that made the arrow that pierces your heart. Find the means of removing it. While you live: live! And then live again!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story references [Buddhist thought and a popular Tibetan creation story](http://seserakh.tumblr.com/citations).


End file.
